So I have made my self a Particle System and right now its probably in its alpha stage. My whole goal was to make a system that could be used anywhere with a really easy to use api. Eventually, a really easy editor to make cool effects via multiple emitters vs just one.

This is a video of what I got so far. Just me mucking around with it. It is much sharper and more detailed but youtube made everything look muddy.

Basically, you can set a bounding box that well not render the particles if they are not inside it. (don't render whats not on screen) I don't think java2D does this be default and it seems to improve performance.

But I really would like input of what things/features you would like to see in a particle system. I can make it so you don't update the particles if they are not on the screen or +/- 100 pixels around it. Blinking particles. Fading in and out. (still working on easy to use system for this) rotation ( reluctant to add this as it really slows things down in java2D) Global friction, gravity, and wind. All particles default to rendering a square if they don't have an image. Particles that poo money on to your desktop. (ok that I can't do)

Don't know if people care or not but I am working on an effect editor that will allow people to make cool effects using the SystemX. I plan on using this editor for feature games I will make but if anyone else wants to use it cool.

Here are some features:

1) Use an image for the particle or use a an Array of images for the particle. Or if you want, just use basic primitive rendering and go all retro. 2) Add multiple emitters in one effect to achieve many different types of effects: fireballs, explosions, rain, snow, sparks anything. 3) Have control over basically every attribute a particle can have and see the results instantly under different testing modes. 4) Be able to test many different effects easily and quickly. If its a tail effect use the tail effect test to watch a projectile fly across the screen using your new effect. If its an explosion, click around in the explosion test mode and enjoy the light show. For continuous effects, try out the, you guessed it, continuous effect mode. 5) Change the background the effects are being tested on. Sometimes they look good in the editor with a black or white background but just don't fit when you actually use them in a game. You can also load an image as the background. 6) Some of the attributes you can use include: speed, acceleration, location, angle, age, agedecay, fade, fadedecay, size, maxsize, growthrate/shrinkrate, maxspeed, spread, rotation, emit number, blink, random, and more. 7) Set the max number of particles, emitters, and effects. Set the global Wind and gravity. 9) Documentation and examples on how to use SystemX.

These are currently things that I will be using in my games. If there are things that you would use that aren't hear please tell me. Eventually, I will port this over to OpenGL and slowly add more OpenGL features, primary shaders and the ability to set the shaders.

So I now know how I want the image loader to work but I am wondering if adding a colorize option would be wanted or not? It will let you load say a grayscale and just colorize it based on a rgb or is that out of the scope of the editor?

Also, as far as licensing goes, its a do what you want with it as long as you give credit but that is still a little ways off as I really want to finish this and remake it using LWJGL.

I also added a scale speed. This will let you simply speedup or slow down an emitter so you can make say one explosion and scale its size and speed to create many different effects with the same emitter.

Make sure that you add a new emitter, set the emitter, and that click test is ticked. Then you can click around and it will throw some particles. I will add tooltips and a detailed readme in later releases that will show what everything does and upload a video tutorial on how to create an effect and use it in a game.

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